


forget we're far apart

by shortcrust



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Background The Captain/Lieutenant Havers (Ghosts TV 2019), Bittersweet, Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27346786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortcrust/pseuds/shortcrust
Summary: Dave Roberts has been dealing in military collectibles for over thirty years, but has never had a request quite like the one that landed in his inbox fromacooper@buttonhouseevents.co.uk.
Comments: 47
Kudos: 212





	forget we're far apart

Dave Roberts - the proverbial ‘son’ of _T. Roberts & Son Militaria _\- was sat behind the counter of the aforementioned store and busy being thoroughly defeated by the puzzle pages when the bell above the door rang.

“Hiya,” offers the young woman who steps in, with a little smile and a shuffle to wipe off her feet. It’s been hammering it down for about a week at this point. “I’m Alison Cooper. You called about my email?”

Pushing away the newspaper, Dave sits up straight. He’s been looking forward to this all week, as it happens.

“Oh, grand. Yeah, hang on just a sec,” he says, hopping off his stool and crossing over to the storage shelves at his back. 

Having been in the business of selling military collectibles for what was now amounting to his third decade, there wasn’t much that Dave and his dad before him hadn’t been able to track down. You didn’t get to be around that long without getting a bit of a knack and a bit of a name for it. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when he got a polite little message asking whether he (or anyone he knew) had (or could get ahold of) any items related to a specific unit. Those sorts of things came through the pipes fairly often, though the level of detail in this particular one was certainly a change of pace.

He retrieves the printed off email from where he’d tucked it with the items he’d reserved for her.

“I’ll tell you what, you didn’t half do your research.” He gives the sheet a waggle in the air to beckon her over to the table positioned over behind the end of the counter. From experience, he’s found it best not to have unvetted customers handle expensive items within dashing distance of the front door. “Look this all up at the War Office, did you?”

“Something like that.” 

There’s something wry in the tone of her voice, and Dave feels his face contort itself into a quizzical arrangement. She snorts out a laugh.

“I have a,” she pauses, and wrinkles her nose, “source?”

Dave huffs a breath. “Well, I’ve got a few things that might interest you and your so-called _source_.”

He places down in front of her a tray containing an array of items bagged in protective clear cellophane. He’d rooted through their shelves and their backrooms, and in the end had to call up a couple of other dealers he knew this end of the country to source what Mrs. Cooper was looking for. She’d mentioned owning an old property with a long and storied past, and was wanting some items for a small display to represent its military history. 

Nice gesture, he thought.

“First things first,” he says, lifting up the item lying on top. “You asked for a swagger stick.”

He slides the short cane out of a thin sheath of bubble wrap, and passes it over the table. Mrs. Cooper takes it from him with a strange little flinch, as if she is surprised by its weight. There’s a beat of silence in the air while she turns it carefully in her fingers, then raps it on one palm. 

Dave, never a fan of an awkward pause, endeavours to fill it. “Usually these were made from a much paler rattan, you know. Bit hard to track down one like how you described - think this’ll do?”

She nods eagerly. “Yes. Yes, that’s perfect!”

That’s alright, then. He soldiers on. “You said that the house was used for officer training from the outset, and for convalescence until ’46. So I’ve pulled out a few other bits that might appeal to either-or.”

The rest of the tray is full of smaller trinkets and banalities from the home front; medicine cases, instructional pamphlets, identity documentation and training helmets. The average customer tends to be more keen on military goods that’ve actually been to battle and back again, so he’s quite pleased when she selects an original _Make Do & Mend _booklet and places it carefully to the side. 

“I’ll just take these then,” she says, with a polite smile and a tilt of her head over to the till. 

“Ah, not so fast.” Dave picks up and flaps the sheet of folded printer paper. “One of these came up.”

The most remarkable part of Mrs. Cooper’s request was not its general tone nor even the nature of it, _per se_. People asked for things to remember their dearly departed family by all the time. People even sought ought specific curios or strange items every so often. Granted, the swagger stick was a touch peculiar, but far from the oddest part. No, rather, it was just interesting how detailed and startlingly _precise_ her information was. He wasn’t joking about how well read she evidently was - whatever record book she’d tracked down was a real font of knowledge. Normally, requests with a familial tint were more along the lines of ‘ _I’d love anything from the battle that my grandfather fought in_ ’, not ‘ _here are the service numbers, full names and postings for two dozen specific men_ ’. 

It made Dave’s job at once much easier and much, much harder. Undeniably, it certainly made it more rewarding. 

“Not to toot my own horn,” he declares, as he moves the tray off to the side, “but I happen to think this is a cracking good find.” Mrs. Cooper makes an curious sound in her throat, so Dave carefully lays out his prize in front of her.

It’s a canvas kit bag, the cylindrical kind with riveted holes around the top for a drawstring that has long since vanished. Clothes, bags and other webbing tended to be those items most quick to age and most likely to age poorly; he’d tracked this down from a mate who primarily dealt in Boer War paraphernalia, actually, and who’d managed to keep it in pretty good nick. It’s obvious straight away what it is (which is always a win when it comes to a bit of fabric over half a century old) and most notably undamaged are the large block-printed numerals showing off a six-digit service number. 

“Oh, wow - can I?” Mrs. Cooper pauses half leaned over the table, her hand hovering in mid-air. When Dave nods, she lowers it and gently draws her fingertips across the printed hessian. The painted on lettering is a little chipped around the edges, but numbers are still faintly raised. There’s a sort of academic awe in her movement, the kind he recognises in people first attempting to parse the physical reality of something they’ve only previously been able to imagine. “It’s got a label and everything.”

“Tend to only get personal details on trunks and sacks like this. Field kits, sometimes.”

She looks up. ”Do we know who’s this was?”

“Yup.” He checks the email, finds the line he dragged a yellow highlighter over. “Belonged to a Lt. W. Havers. Seems like what was inside did, too.” Dave nods his head at the other two things that were sent alongside the kit bag. What was inside was a pistol holster (standard issue) and a monogrammed cigarette case (decidedly _not_ standard issue, given how severely tobacco was rationed). Alongside his placement in a cushy house down in rural Surrey, it was this that led Dave to make some possibly spurious inferences about Lt. W. Havers’ kind of background. Understandably, it is this one out of the two items that Mrs Cooper reaches for. 

The silver plating is aged, darkened to a smokey patina in some spots and polished with oils from handling in others. There’s a smooth and shiny patch beside the clasp that suggests it was well used, or at very least was frequently opened. She presses in the metal, and the catch springs cautiously open.

Dave inspected the picture found inside himself the other day, just before he triumphantly hit ‘ _reply_ ’ and invited the person on the other end of acooper@buttonhouseevents.co.uk in for a visit to the shop, so he knows what the lady in question is looking at now. It’s a photograph from a cricket game on a manicured lawn, the shape of a tall building looming in the corner. Play has evidently paused. Figures in the background are turned in conversation, and the one in the foreground is gesturing with a bat at someone out of frame. He appears to be in dress trousers but any uniform jacket has been temporarily discarded, his sleeves folded to the elbows and collar loosely unbuttoned. He has a moustache and an officer’s haircut, both clearly grey in a manner unrelated to the black and white of the photography. He is caught, in the perpetual way of pictures taken while the subject was unaware, with his eyes closed and mouth open in a laugh. 

There’s a small hole in the top of the photograph which suggests it may have once been tacked to a noticeboard before being removed. 

“No idea who that is,” Dave admits. “His brother, maybe?”

“Maybe,” she repeats absently. She’s still staring at the photograph, and nudges it gently with her thumb. It doesn’t really budge, still held in place by the strip of elastic that otherwise would have pinned cigarettes down. When she eventually tears her eyes away, it’s to look at him with a surprising intensity. “How much?”

“Nah,” he waves. He likes getting to do this part. “Just take it.”

She blinks. The ferocity evaporates. “Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

Dave cuts her off. “Pay me for the stick and the book, but I like to see things back with their families if I can.” He shrugs. “Bad business practice, maybe. Helps me sleep at night.”

“I’m not family,” says Mrs. Cooper slowly, like she’s the one confused. 

Dave gestures loosely to the bag, and the items beside it. “Close as this stuff’s come in the last seventy years. Reckon it’s better for it to be with you than gathering dust in a warehouse or ending up on eBay.”

There's a certain pragmatic approach you have to take, dealing in wartime ephemera. These were real people's real lives once upon a time. The items he sells (that pay for his pints of milk and his curry on the weekends) belonged to dead men who in all likelihood became such with them in hand or pocket.

They're only things; they're not people. But maybe they can help tell a little about them, in the end. All the better.

“Thank you,” she says. Her voice is strong but sincere. Dave gets the impression she’s one of those people who’d make an excellent schoolmarm, leading a gaggle of children about. “Really - thank you. This will mean so much to him.”

It is only a little bit later - after Mrs. Cooper has paid up, and taken her bags, and sprinted through the rain to her car with her them shielded under her puffy coat - that Dave thinks to wonder exactly which ‘ _him_ ’ it is that she could possibly have been referring to.

**Author's Note:**

> I was very taken with the idea of Alison setting up a little cabinet in one of the halls of Button House, and filling it with little information boards about the history of the place. _Did you know_ , it'd say, _that this land was used to celebrate ancient celestial rituals? Did you know there was a farming settlement nearby? Did you know there were executions here? Did you know the role of the great houses in the Second World War?_
> 
> There's plenty of information she could get through first hand accounts, but I was imagining the scene that an antique dealer might have if she came in with some surprisingly specific requests, and then got caught up in the idea of a certain soldier secreting away a picture of their sweetheart to take with them as they shipped out.
> 
> Title from my favourite Glenn Miller song of wartime pining, _[Always In My Heart](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7c2pG6ceYaHXzBO8zM9dtr?si=3flUAMJbQY6w2oxbQtaMCA)_.
> 
> I'm also on tumblr at [shortcrust](https://shortcrust.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
